How do i read a Excel File in PHP

[Anon]

How do i read a Excel File in PHP on *nix or windows.

Thanks in advance.

regards,
Johan Hanekom
[e-mail]

[Anon]

This might be simple.
i don't know if there are any libraries out there to read that, but if you don't have any you could look at www.wotsit.org and look for the format description of a *.xls file and do the reading yourself ... maybe complex ...

[paggard]

if in windows - use COM object - but it is toooooo slow, if in unix - forget about real .xls - convert it into plain text with tab deviders - and read it.

Certainly, you can write a library to work with .xls binaries - but it may take all your life if using PHP

[Anon]

As paggard suggested, the easiest way is to export it into a .csv file and read it as text.

I've read and written them from perl with COM, it worked okay. I've never tried COM from php, but here's an article on how to do it:

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/alain20001003.php3

You might also try an ODBC connection. I've never tried that, sounds pretty scary to me:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q178717

[Anon]

Here's how to get the odbc connection. This article is oriented toward Java, but the ODBC part still applies:

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/javaqa/2001-06/04-qa-0629-excel.html